Problem or Opportunity? Steve Jobs on Standardizing Royalty Free Codecs
June 3, 2010 – 4:38 pm | No Comment

As readers of this blog know, I am a long-time proponent of royalty-free standardization as the best option for open Web media, preferable to informal, vendor-run open-sourcing of undocumented or unreviewed Intellectual Property Rights.
MPEG, an …

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Broadband Policy

A Royalty-Free Network Policy For Broadband

Digital TV

16 years of “Grand Alliance”, not royalty-free yet?

Interactive TV

Fixing the Sad State of this Promising Convergence

Java DTV

Royalty-Free Java for DTV

OMS Video

Sun Microsystems’ Open Media Stack and OMS Video codec

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Articles in Headline

Patent Dumping For Democracy: Reconsidering America’s DTV Diplomacy
September 15, 2009 – 4:58 pm | No Comment
Patent Dumping For Democracy:  Reconsidering America’s DTV Diplomacy

“More Democratic” … “It is a matter of social justice”
So US ambassadors have lobbied South American governments since 2007 that “[t]he issue is whether the government will choose the [ATSC] digital television standard that is …

“Conflict Through Consensus”: Europe’s Hybrid Broadbanders Paint on UK’s Project Canvas
September 10, 2009 – 11:11 pm | No Comment
“Conflict Through Consensus”: Europe’s Hybrid Broadbanders Paint on UK’s Project Canvas

A “Julius Stonian” observation:  standards groups aren’t “consensus organizations”, they are political organizations. Winners declare their way the “consensus”, and changes in political context shift the “consensus”.
So reflects calls in several slides at yesterday’s Hybrid …

The BRIC That Could: How Brazil Is Changing Your TV
September 3, 2009 – 1:22 pm | No Comment
The BRIC That Could: How Brazil Is Changing Your TV

Europe sneers at their technology.
US’s DTV transition passed them by.
BBC’s intelligentsia never noticed them.
No consumer electronics industry to match Asia;
neighbors don’t speak their language.
So how did Brazil become a world leader in digital TV?
And why …

“Trust But Verify”: IPR & BBC’s Project Canvas
August 31, 2009 – 6:46 pm | No Comment
“Trust But Verify”: IPR & BBC’s Project Canvas

I have filed comments in the UK Project Canvas public consultation.  To catch up on the UK context with global implications, watch James Murdock’s mesmerizing anti-BBC screed, and say…
“This is the BBC.”
Perhaps no other single …

Is It Reasonable to Discriminate? ABA Group Weighs in on CUT FATT DTV Patent Dispute
May 5, 2009 – 1:22 pm | No Comment

“RAND” — Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory — is a term often used in standards contexts to describe or set expectations of fairness in patent licensing related to standards.
But what does the term “RAND” really mean?  As …

Patent Fights Fuel US DTV’s Slide from World Stage
April 29, 2009 – 5:24 pm | One Comment
Patent Fights Fuel US DTV’s Slide from World Stage

The “FATT” is fighting back this week in comments filed at the US FCC against the “Coalition United To Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transition” (CUT FATT) proposal to address patent overreaching in the …

Carterfone is Not Enough: The Missing Broadband Policy Link
April 13, 2009 – 3:45 pm | No Comment
Carterfone is Not Enough:  The Missing Broadband Policy Link

Royalty-free standards, the very foundation of the Open Internet, are not even mentioned in the FCC’s 60-page Broadband Plan notice of inquiry.
Surprising?  Not really.
Bridging even first principles of the Internet era to the realities of …